


Paved with Good Intentions

by songofdefiance



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Episode Fix-It: s04e08 Silence in the Library, F/M, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Post-Library River Song
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-13
Updated: 2018-09-13
Packaged: 2019-07-11 19:43:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15979139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/songofdefiance/pseuds/songofdefiance
Summary: “This is a prison,” she mutters.  “It’s got to be a prison.  And one where you’re not even really here - not that you have as much experience escaping prisons as I do, and yet - ““A prison,” the Doctor interrupts.  “Maybe.”“Not the first,” River says.  “And certainly not the worst.”The Doctor raises an eyebrow.  “Are you sure about that?”





	Paved with Good Intentions

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not really sure where this idea came from - I've been revisiting Series Nine more lately, and I have a clearer understanding of the events of the season finale (the first time I watched it I had very little idea as to what was going on). So most of my inspiration comes from that.
> 
> River is post-Library and post-Trenzalore. The Doctor is... well, you'll see. Same with Kovarian. 
> 
> Warning for self-harm. 
> 
> Enjoy!

“What is the point of the bloody door?  It only ever leads me back here.”

The Doctor stands across from her, wearing the same smile he’s been wearing the entire time on his face.  It’s gentle, empathetic - 

Wrong.

River knows that if he were really here, he would be climbing up the walls, in even more frustration than she is.  They’re confined to a small room with no significant features, and every time she enters the door she finds herself back in the same room.  

And the Doctor is always there - waiting, with that smile on his face.

Her eyes narrow.  “Who are you, really?”

“I’m the Doctor.”

River rolls her eyes.

He shrugs.  “I am. Doesn’t really matter what you believe.  Alright, it does, but that’s not important right now.”

River glances behind her, at the door that has been mocking her this entire time.  “Apart from  _ that _ , you’re the only noticeable thing in this room.  I’d say you’re important.”

She doesn’t know how long she’s been here.  Time seems frozen in a way that it never has - not even in the Library, where the years inched by her and she learned how to paint a smile on her face.  She doesn’t remember how she got here: a nondescript room with black walls, a single light source from above, a single wooden door, and the Doctor.

Who has been very unhelpful, so far.

“If this is some misguided attempt to save me - “ she begins.

“Well, you won’t know unless you get out, will you?” he asks.  

“Then it’s a trap.”

“Or a test.”

“Same thing.”

The Doctor ignores that.  “If it was a trap,” he begins, “then what was the lure?  Memory is important, River, we know that better than anyone, considering how many timelines are tangled up inside our heads.  What do you remember?”

River opens her mouth, then closes it.  The Doctor’s gaze is boring into her, but she feels like she’s also getting stared at from the doorway.  She glances at it to see that the door remains closed, and no one is there. 

“Charlotte,” she answers automatically.  “Charlotte was crying.”

“Sometimes children cry.”

River shakes her head.  What with Charlotte being the computer, she doesn’t allow herself to cry much.  At least, not in front of other people. She won’t even let River see, most of the time.  River hates that similarity between the two of them.

The Doctor claps his hands together.  “Right then! A child who doesn’t usually cry, crying.  And then you were here. Coincidence?”

“How do you know she doesn’t usually cry?”

“Dangerous for computers to get emotional,” the Doctor says, and for a moment there’s a flicker of anger on his face.  “And that isn’t very fair to Charlotte, is it? You’ve thought as much, over the decades you’ve been in there. Every time her face crumples and you wish things were  _ different  _ \- “

River swallows.  “Every child should be able to cry.”

“Like you weren’t allowed to?”

River just barely keeps herself from flinching.  Whether he’s real or not, he still knows how to cut her to the bone.

His smile is still in place.  “I guess the only thing to do is get back to her, then.”

“What do you think I’ve trying to do?” River snaps.

“Walking through a door.”

River grits her teeth.  She hates this - hates being here, hates that her only option is a door that she’s inexplicably afraid of, even though she’s been through it dozens of times and has always, always come out in this room again.  She hates that the Doctor just stands there, talking like himself but with so little of the movement that characterizes him. His presence, which would usually be all she needs, is little comfort.

“Yes, well,” she says.  “I suppose I’ll have to walk through it again, won’t I?”

“The definition of insanity, River.”

River has already turned her back, facing the door and curling her hands into fists.  “Well,” she says over her shoulder, “It’s a good thing I’m not sane, isn’t it?”

* * *

 

“What is the point of the bloody door?  It’s not exactly letting me escape you.”

Kovarian has always smiled like a shark.  That’s the case even now, her uncovered eye sharp as she gazes at River, stripping her to the bone.  River used to sometimes compare the Library data core to hell, on her bad days, but she knows that this - repeatedly going through a door, only to find herself facing this particular ghost - this is the real hell.

“You never have escaped me,” Kovarian points out.

River snorts.  That’s a lie, and they both know it.  Kovarian’s last gasp in her life had been when she caught River inside an exploding TARDIS - and again when her mother sent Kovarian screaming to her death in an aborted timeline.  Her life had been refreshingly Kovarian-free past that point; spending time with a post-Trenzalore version of the Doctor had only proven that.

“You do realize that I’m dead, don’t you?” River asks.  “Not sure how much use I’ll be to you now.”

“Maybe it’s your information I find useful,” Kovarian says, eyes glittering.  “Maybe all the knowledge you’ve gained in your long life is something we could use to fix our mistake.  Maybe everything you’ve been afraid of will come to pass. Only you’ll be stuck inside a computer, unable to do anything about it.”

Kovarian has been casually voicing similar threats the entire time River has been here.  They shouldn’t affect her anymore, but each and every time they never fail to make River’s blood boil.  Every time, her resistance to her impulse to wrap her hands around Kovarian’s throat weakens just a little bit more.

Instead, she plasters on a smile and says, “Except you haven’t moved a muscle, and you’ve never exactly followed me through the door.  If I had to make a wild guess, I’d say you’re not really here.”

“And why not?”

River feels the moment that her smile turns feral.  “Because if you were, one of us would be dead already.”

Kovarian never stops smiling.  No matter what River says, no matter what she threatens her with, she never stops bloody  _ smiling _ .

“Do you ever regret that it was Amy who got to finish me off?” she asks.

“Not really,” River replies, already turning around to examine the door again.  She can’t seem to shake the feeling that someone is watching her from it, but every time she turns around, there’s no one there.  

Turning back to Kovarian, she adds, “Mostly I’m just disappointed that I didn’t stick around to watch.”

Eyes widening, Kovarian affects a mocking gasp.  “Why, Melody! What would your precious Doctor say?”

“Oh, I’m sure he would sputter in disapproval,” River replies.  “But deep down he’d be relieved that someone else got to you before he did.”

The silence that falls after that statement is a little bit too resounding for her taste.  River sighs, pivoting towards the door once more, hoping against hope that this will be the time where something else happens - something besides hell.  She steps towards the threshold, with Kovarian’s soft laughter ringing in her ears.

* * *

 

River’s heart is beating fast - too fast.  She’d been calm a moment ago, she’s certain of it.

“Is it everything you hoped for?” the Doctor asks.  

“Shut up,” River says.  

He mimes zipping his lips.  

River starts pacing.  The Doctor is in the center of the room, so she paces around him in a circle, trying not to let her thoughts crash into each other.  She can’t help but think that their positions are usually reversed, with her being the calm center and the Doctor orbiting her. Or maybe they orbit each other, and this is just further proof that the man in the room with her isn’t the man she loves.

“River,” he murmurs, after an indeterminate amount of time has passed.

She finally stops in front of him.  “Why are you babyface?”

He blinks.  “Sorry?”

“Why do you have that face?” she asks.  “The last you I saw was Pretty Boy, and the one before that was the Scottish Grump.  Why you?”

He pouts.  “Not counting Trenzalore, are we?”

“It’s like you said - I was an echo.”

“I also seem to recall saying that all of us are echoes, in the end.”  He’s still smiling, but it becomes sadder. “Everyone is an echo to someone - they remind someone of a person they’ve lost, or they feel familiar but the other person doesn’t know why.  I am dead to someone in the universe. You’ve been dead to me the entire time I’ve known you. That doesn’t mean the rest wasn’t real.”

River sighs shakily.  “I’d hate to be whoever you’re dead to.”

He regards her calmly, and it takes her a few moments to realize what she’s just said.  

“Oh,” she murmurs, taking a step towards him and exhaling.  “Sweetie, I - “

“This face,” he interrupts, and just like that the sadness is gone.  “Babyface. I should be annoyed by that, probably.”

“Yes, you do seem in the habit of being annoyed by the truth.”

The Doctor shrugs.  “The truth is rubbish sometimes.  It’s why I lie so much.”

River shakes her head, taking a step back, feeling like they’re dancing, even though he hasn’t moved.  “Not this you,” she says, and it’s a realization. “You haven’t lied to me since I got here. In fact, I’d go so far as to say you’ve been brutally honest with me.”

The Doctor leans forward.  “But how can you  _ know _ ?”

“I always know.”

“Can’t argue with that,” he admits.  “But - as to your question. I don’t know.”

River frowns.  “What don’t you know?”

“Why this face.  Why I have this face.  I don’t know why it’s this face.  I can remember being the Eyebrows - much better nickname than Scottish Grumplord, by the way - but I have this face again.  I don’t know how I got here, any more than you do. I just know you.”

“Why?”

His face lights up.  “Ah - there, you see?   _ Now  _ you’re starting to ask the right questions.”

River huffs.  “And the answer?”

“Don’t know.”

River rolls her eyes and storms towards the door.

* * *

 

Kovarian is still laughing.

“If you don’t stop that in the next five seconds, I  _ will  _ snap your neck.”

Kovarian’s laugh subsides into chuckles, but her feathers don’t seem to be ruffled.  The part of River that is Melody (that will always be Melody, no matter how much she tries to tell herself that she left that life behind) is screaming, pushing for her to run.

River stands her ground.  Running only ever seems to bring her back here.

“Why are you afraid?” Kovarian asks her.

River clamps down on the urge to be sarcastic.   _ Gee, I don’t know - maybe it’s to do with the fact that you contain every nightmare from my childhood, and I seem to be trapped in this room with you for the foreseeable future? _

“Not of me,” Kovarian clarifies, as though she can hear River’s thoughts.  “Of the door.”

River opens her mouth to say that that’s ridiculous, that she’s not afraid of the door, just frustrated - then shuts it, because it’s true.  Every time she looks at the door or even thinks of it, she feels a sense of dread, like there’s something watching her. She’s starting to suspect that the Silence are in the room with her, somehow, even though she doesn’t have a way of marking her skin to be sure.  

“Incredible,” Kovarian drawls.  “River Song, one of the most feared warriors in the cosmos: the general of the battle of Halma 6, the murderer of the Doctor, and the wife of the Doctor - which seems far more terrifying to me, by the way - and you’re afraid of a door.  And you don’t even know why.”

“Are your priests here?” River asks.

Kovarian narrows her eyes.  “I don’t know. But I’m fairly certain they’re not.”  She taps on her eye drive.

Another piece of evidence to add to River’s growing suspicion that Kovarian isn’t really here.  The real Kovarian would never have given River an answer that easily, nor would she be as calm and still as she is right now.  The real Kovarian never had this much patience with her, and she would be trying to take whatever it is she wants from River already, rather than playing the long game with her.  

Much as River wants to relax, though, she can’t.  If there is even the slightest chance that this is the real Kovarian - that she’s somehow taken River from the Library - then she can’t let down her guard for even a second.  Kovarian has a nasty habit of choosing to strike just as her enemy believes they’ve won.

“You’re slacking,” Kovarian says, voice suddenly sharper.  “What did I teach you?”

“Threat assessment, then elimination,” is River’s reactive response.

“Threats?”

“You.”

“And the door.”  Kovarian leans forward.  “You’re not paying attention, Melody.”

River shakes her head.  “The door isn’t a threat.”

“You’re afraid of it.”

River lifts her chin, and states,  “I’m more afraid of you.”

“Still slacking,” Kovarian snaps.  “Fine, then. Go through the door, if you’re so afraid of me.”

* * *

 

“This is so like you,” River growls, jabbing her finger at the Doctor.  “Pretending like you have all the answers when the truth is, you’re as clueless as I am!”

“I thought that’s why you like me.”

“It’s insufferable.”

The Doctor smirks.  “Welcome to my world.  There I was, minding my own business, knocking about different planets and times - suddenly River Song crashes into my life with her space hair and spoilers and infuriating know-it-all-ness.  Who else was I going to fall in love with?”

River sighs, reaching up and massaging her scalp.  She wonders if she needs to be hiding the damage, since he’s not really here.  

“This is a prison,” she mutters.  “It’s got to be a prison. And one where you’re not even really here - not that you have as much experience escaping prisons as I do, and yet - “

“A prison,” the Doctor interrupts.  “Maybe.”

“Not the first,” River says.  “And certainly not the worst.”

The Doctor raises an eyebrow.  “Are you sure about that?”

No, she isn’t.  For one thing, she’s never been in a prison where she wasn’t able to feel time passing before.  For another, it’s never taken this long to escape. However long ‘this long’ is. She isn’t getting tired, or hungry or thirsty, and that almost disappoints her.  It’s another reminder that she’s a data ghost, her molecules having been virtualized long ago.

“Why am I here?” she asks.

As if he’s continuing her train of thought, the Doctor adds, “Is it a trap?  A test? A prison?”

“Or is it all three?” River finishes.

“Or none of them?”

_ Something worse _ , River thinks, but she doesn’t dare to say it out loud.  

There’s something she’s missing.  There’s always a way out, or a way through, but there’s no such thing as an escape-proof prison.  River doesn’t know if she’s missing something about the door, or about the Doctor, or if there’s something else that she somehow hasn’t noticed yet.  The stillness sits uneasily in her stomach, feeling like a scream.

“Did they put you in here to keep me from going mad?” she asks.

The Doctor chuckles.  “If they wanted to keep you from going mad, I’m not sure if I’m the best choice.”

“Hard to argue with that,” she mutters.

She spends some time (or no time) inspecting every inch of the room, looking for flaws, or signs.  The walls are spotless - no scratches, dents, or dirt of any kind. There’s no dust. The overhead light is from a single bulb, its light eaten up by the black color on the walls.  The floors remained untouched by her pacing. The Doctor does not move, and he always faces her.

These are all constants, seemingly unchanging.

River’s more reluctant to inspect the door, but she forces herself to move towards it anyway.  It’s a wooden door, the sort of style one might see in the 20th century, with a brass handle. Despite its antiquity, it appears as untouched as everything else.

She reaches out, brushing her hand against the wood.  Nothing happens.

“You know, usually someone has to go  _ through  _ the door,” the Doctor says.

River spins around.  “What is the point?” she snaps, marching over to him.  “Every time I go through this door, I end up back here!  I’m in a room with you - and you’re being no help at all - and the only other thing in here is a door that leads to nowhere.  I don’t know why I’m here, or where ‘here’ is - if there’s some kind of virus infecting the datacore, or something else. I don’t  _ know _ !”

The Doctor waits for her to finish her rant, then says, “Sometimes the only way out is through.”

The door.  The door. It always comes down to the bloody door.  River growls, then spins back around and throws it open.

* * *

 

River has never confronted Kovarian about everything she put her through.  Oh, she’s certainly been tempted; there were some knights in Stormcage when she would awaken from nightmares trembling with anger rather than fear, where she would look at her hands and see them wrapped around Kovarian’s throat.  She would force herself to sit still and close her eyes, with nothing to calm her down but the sound of her own breathing.

She never acted on those impulses, and in the end it was Amy who took Kovarian’s life.  As the years passed, and it became clear that all of Kovarian’s schemes ended in failure, she eventually lost that bloodlust and moved on.

As she eyes Kovarian standing in the middle of the room, looking gleeful at River’s predicament, she finds herself reconsidering.

“Look at you,” Kovarian purrs.  “You want so badly to kill me, don’t you?”

River gets the sense that Kovarian should be more concerned about that, since there’s probably very little Kovarian could do to stop her.

“I have always wanted to kill you,” she answers.

Kovarian folds her hands behind her back.  “What’s stopping you?” she asks. “You’ve killed others.  Plenty of them. How else would you have been able to earn your place on the Harmony and Redemption?”

River doesn’t answer.  She remembers, all too well, the appalled look on the Doctor’s face when she told him the requirements for tickets aboard that ship.  Much of what she’d presented had been a disguise, but not that part.

“I bet you told yourself that it was justified,” Kovarian says.  “That only the people who really  _ deserved  _ it died.  Dictators and Daleks and Cybermen, abusers and murderers and slave traders.  But how much of it was justice, and how much of it was you venting your programming on other people?”

River isn’t able to stop herself from drawing in a shaky breath at those words.  Those are questions she’s asked herself, more than once. She forces a smile onto her face.

“Everything I learned,” she says, “I learned from you.”

“I suppose so,” Kovarian replies, shrugging.  “But you know as well as I do that you wouldn’t have lived as long as you did without my training.  A stay bullet, poison... one of those things would have caught up with you long before  _ love  _ did.”

Kovarian says the word ‘love’ like it’s another kind of poison; she probably sees it that way.  River is tempted to bring up Kovarian’s broken relationship with Tasha Lem - suspects that it’s a large part of the reason why Kovarian has such disdain for love - but River actually has a healthy respect for Tasha, having been friends with her younger self for a brief time.  She’s not about to sully that memory.

Tasha Lem died shortly after the Siege of Trenzalore.  The fall of the Eleventh. The stalemate that had lasted centuries, where the version of the Doctor who’d married her regenerated.  River has always been led to believe that Kovarian’s actions were because she was afraid of the Time War’s resumption, but now... now she wonders.  

River eyes Kovarian, feeling less angry and more speculative.  Perhaps she’s not as immune to love as she’d like to believe.

* * *

 

“I think,” the Doctor says, “that you’re going about this all wrong.  There’s no sense in just going through the door over and over again. Maybe it’s more about me, and why I’m here.  Maybe you should take advantage of my presence. Talk to me. It’s what you been waiting for, for hundreds of years, isn’t it?  The chance to confront me?”

* * *

 

“I think,” Kovarian says, “that you’re going about this all wrong.  There is little sense in just going through the door over and over again.  Maybe it’s more about me, and why I’m here. Maybe you should take advantage of my presence.  Talk to me. It’s what you been waiting for, for hundreds of years, isn’t it? The chance to confront me?”

* * *

 

River hears the door close behind her, eyeing the Doctor with more than a little trepidation.  She’s both angry and humiliated, that the Doctor’s words had been enough to make her try the door again.  She doesn’t think she’s ever been more afraid of answer in her whole life.

“Okay then,” she says quietly, taking a step forward.  “Why did you leave me in the datacore?”

She’s not sure what the other, unspoken question is:  _ why didn’t you just let me die _ or  _ why didn’t you ever come get me _ .

“When I was younger,” the Doctor says, “I couldn’t stand it - the thought that you died in the presence of someone who didn’t even know you, not really.  I felt that you deserved something better than that, and thought: Library datacore, where every book ever written is stored. The closest approximation to heaven I could think of.”

River swallows.  “For a human, maybe.  And when you were older?”

The Doctor looks down at his shoes, his fringe hiding his eyes for a moment, before he looks back at her.  For the first time, the smile has slipped off of his face. All of the weariness and age that he carries is in his eyes, unmasked for the first time in a very long time.  River feels that in her heart - the heavy burden of knowledge of her eventual fate, and how it continually weighed on him throughout their relationship.

“I didn’t see any other way,” he finally answered.  “I spent decades poring over everything that had happened in the Library - whether or not there was a way to save you from that fate, or whether or not I could free you from the datacore.  I couldn’t move for weeks after I realized that it was hopeless. So I closed the loop, and that was that.”

River swallows.  “You could’ve removed the neural relay.  Surely that wouldn’t have changed much.”

“‘Not one line’,” the Doctor murmurs, and River recognizes her own words parroted back at her.

Amy once asked Mels about whether she thought they might go to hell.  Mels laughed and said, “I’d rather go to hell than heaven. Heaven sounds boring.”

And the Doctor knows that, but he didn’t want to risk their time together, even for the sake of her data ghost.  River thinks of Charlotte, who is probably alone now and likely terrified for River, and once again feels the need to get out of whatever prison she’s trapped in.  She wonders if, after she gets out of here, if it would be too much to ask Charlotte to... to...

“I can’t do this anymore,” River says, reaching for the door knob.

* * *

 

“Why,” River asks hollowly.  She’s accepted that she can’t run away from Kovarian anymore.  “Why did you feel the need to systematically destroy my life just to get to the Doctor?  Why blow up the TARDIS to ‘save the universe’ when it nearly ended up destroying the universe anyway?  Why - “

She bites off the end of the last question, but Kovarian seems to hear it anyway.

“Why you?” Kovarian asks, raising an eyebrow.  “Seeing as how kidnapping a child from Gallifrey was rather impossible at the time, you were our only option.  The only person who stood a chance. It may have been a better to send you after him when you were still a child - but alas, you escaped our custody before we could.”

River’s stomach turns at the idea that tiny, frightened Melody Pond might have been able to point a gun at the Doctor and shoot him, without hesitation.  She only has vague memories of that life, but back then she was aware enough to realize that she didn’t want to be in the Silence’s custody. They got smarter, after she became Mels - realized that it was easier when even she didn’t realize that she was being trained.

“Lake Silencio, then,” River says.

“Oh,  _ that _ ,” Kovarian says, an ugly sneer appearing on her face.  “All you did was fulfill your purpose. Was it so hard?”

River’s hands ball into fists, and she breathes in through her nose and out through her mouth for a few moments.  This is an old anger, one that she keeps buried in her marrow: the knowledge that it was another part of the Church that was responsible for her incarceration.  She remembers reciting all the reasons that Kovarian used to drill into her before the court, to no avail. She remembers the Doctor telling her that she would be serving time in prison, remembers trying to fight against that with everything she had.  

“It was for the sake of the universe,” she claimed.  “I had to. I  _ had  _ to.”

River isn’t really aware of herself moving.  The next thing she knows is that she’s standing over Kovarian, who’s on the ground clutching her bleeding nose.  

She lowers her shaking fist, absently wiping the blood off of her knuckles and onto her white dress.  It’s the first time that she notices that she’s wearing the dress from the Library. 

“Was it everything you hoped for?” Kovarian asks, her voice nasally.  For some reason, those words send a chill down River’s spine.

“Maybe not everything,” River admits.  “But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel better.”

She starts pacing again; for some reason, punching Kovarian has cleared her head, making thinking a little bit easier.  She looks at the door, still feeling dread while she stares at it, when a thought occurs to her.

“Why am I the only one who ever goes through the door?” she asks.

Kovarian, who is now leaning against the wall, still trying to stem the bleeding, says, “Because you’re the only one to think it might lead somewhere?”

“No,” River answers.  “That’s not it. You don’t want to go through it, just as much as I don’t want to.  Maybe more so.”

“I can neither confirm nor deny.”

River walks over to Kovarian and hauls her up by the arm, ignoring Kovarian’s wince as the movement jostles her broken nose.  She tightens her hold on Kovarian into a vice grip, a feral grin threatening to break out across her features. 

“Well,” she says.  “Just for experimental reasons, you and I are both going through the door this time.”

Kovarian attempts to wrench her arm out of River’s grip.  “I don’t see why I have to - “

“You have to because I say so,” River says, smirking at the flash of panic on Kovarian’s face.  “Oh look, suddenly you don’t have control over the situation. We might even be going to our deaths out there, and there’s nothing you or I can do about it.  That’s what  _ truly  _ terrifies you, isn’t it?  The lack of control?”

River pulls Kovarian towards the door, pausing only to savor the terrified glance Kovarian gives her.  “Geromino,” she answers.

* * *

 

River blinks at the Doctor, then blinks again as she realizes that her hands are wrapped around something.  Her eyes move down to see that she’s holding onto someone’s arm, then travel up said arm to see Kovarian’s face.

River releases the arm and stumbles back.  “How did you get in here?” she demands.

She does a double take when she gets a good look at Kovarian’s face.  Her nose is clearly broken, and blood is trickling from her nostrils. It’s already made a mess on her face and her clothes, though considering Kovarian’s clothes are black it doesn’t make much difference.  She also realizes that Kovarian’s staring at the Doctor with a look of horror on her face.

“You,” she breathes.  “You were what was on the other side.”

The Doctor, for his part, looks almost murderous.  “Same to you,” he says, voice low.

River looks at the door.  Somehow, impossibly, she’s brought Kovarian through it, when nothing has happened any of the other times.  Unless - 

Unless something  _ has  _ happened, and passing through the door has made her forget it.

Everything snaps into place with that thought.  The door is a memory filter. That’s the reason why she feels such fear when she looks at it.  Anything to do with memory filtering reminds her of the Silence, so she had the same reaction to the door that she would to the confessional priests.  

She looks at her knuckles.  Dried blood. Which means she’s the one who punched Kovarian in the face.  River takes a brief moment to lament the fact that she can’t remember it.

“You shouldn’t be here,” the Doctor says to Kovarian.  

“No, I shouldn’t,” Kovarian snaps.  “But Melody was never very good at obeying orders.”

“Shut up,” River says.  “I’m thinking.”

To her surprise, they both do.

If there’s a door, and it leads back to where Kovarian was, that means that she’s only allowed to keep the memories of the room she’s currently in.  Now that she’s in the room with the Doctor, she only remembers being in this room. She’s willing to bet that, in the other room, she could only remember Kovarian.  

It also explains why she’d suddenly be angry after emerging from it again.  Talking to Kovarian would probably drive her up the wall.

Now, she just needs something to prove her theory.  

The easiest way to deal with the Silence had been by writing messages to herself on her skin.  But then, back when she’d done that she had a marker. River doesn’t have a marker, here. 

River glances up to see that both the Doctor and Kovarian are watching her.  “I don’t suppose either of you have a marker?” she asks.

They both shake their heads, still wordless.

“Right then,” River says, squaring her shoulders.  She draws up the sleeve of one arm, grimaces, and starts carving.

* * *

Two things River registers, upon coming back through the door again: Kovarian isn’t with her anymore, and her arm is stinging like hell.

She lifts it up into eye view, blinking at the words she sees.

_ Memory filter in door.  Doctor and Kovarian in other room. _

It all slides into place as she reads those words.  The door means that she will only be able to retain memories of the room she’s in, and the fact that she now has this message on her arm means that she must have figured it out in the other room.  And, apparently, the Doctor is in the other room. 

Well.  Now she’s not sure which room she’d rather have been in.

River feels something like excitement, like she’s one step closer to solving the mystery of this place.  She quickly carves an answering message into her other arm, grimacing at the pain. 

“Alright then,” she breathes, grinning and turning back towards the door.  Now that she  _ knows _ , it seems much less terrifying.

* * *

 

River’s grin is triumphant when she looks at her other arm and sees  _ Hello sweetie. _

“I don’t know why you’re so thrilled,” Kovarian says, rolling her eyes.  “Just because you’ve figured out that there are two rooms instead of one.  You’re still very much trapped, with no apparent way out.”

“Progress is progress,” River says, shrugging.  She tears off both of the sleeves of her dress, ripping them up into strips, which she then uses to bind both arms.  “I’ve gotten at least one step closer. Now I just need to figure out why someone would go to the trouble of trapping me in a place like this.  I’m starting to think it is a test, of some kind.”

“Seems a bit optimistic,” Kovarian says.  “Thinking it’s only a test.”

The Doctor, however, is beaming right along with her.  “I think she’s right. Now we just need to narrow it down - what do the testers want?  What is the question? Could be any question, but it must be something only River would know.”

Those words feel like a punch in the gut.  River feels the grin slide off of her face, and she looks at her prison with new eyes.  She feel an unpleasant curl in her stomach as she realizes exactly what this place is, and what it’s trying to get out of her.  

“Not a test,” she says.  “A torture chamber.”

The Doctor is startled into laughing.  “What? That’s - “

“ - exactly right,” Kovarian whispers, her face ashen.  Of course Kovarian would know as well. This is what she was always afraid of.

River swallows.  There’s one word that will unlock this prison, but it’s not a word that she can ever let herself utter.  It’s too dangerous, too important - a word that could burn the skies and drown the stars. She has always held it close to her heart, buried more deeply than every other secret.

“Whoever you are,” she begins.  “Whoever is holding me, right now - you’ve made a big mistake.  You’ve brought me here because you want me to speak a word, but you should know that it’s one I will  _ never  _ utter.  The only time I did, it was because no one could hear it.  But now? You’re a fool. All you’ve done is torture my spirit.  That’s nothing. I’ll spend an eternity here before I cave to you.”

There’s a moment, where it feels like everyone is holding their breath.

Nothing happens.

“Eugh,” Kovarian says, wrinkling her nose.  “You sounded like  _ him _ .”

“I’m going to take that as a compliment,” the Doctor says, preening.

River ignores them both, staring regretfully at her arm.  She tears off the bandages, revealing the second message she left for herself, and then starts carving again, gritting her teeth against the pain.  She feels the Doctor press up against her back while she does - the first time he’s ever moved - and knows that he must be looking over her shoulder.

“Oh,” he says, quietly.  “I see.”

River turns her head, meeting his mouth with hers.  Years and years without him, and even this not-real version of him tastes like him.  Time and space and energy, sizzling under her tongue. 

It’s more chaste than their last kiss, which was a stolen moment in the nightmare that was his grave.  

River pulls away first, drinking him in and smiling.  “I’m sorry, Sweetie,” she says. “But I don’t want you to see this.”

* * *

 

She takes one look at the new words on her arm.

_ Doctor who? _

One look is all she needs to understand the situation she’s in.  River moves to stand in front of the wall. She knows the approximate amount of force that will need to be applied, and the approximate spot on her head that she needs to hit.  But even then, it’s hardly an exact science. She knows that the damage she inflicts could be much worse.

She takes a deep breath, then whips her head forward.

Darkness.

* * *

 

She awakens with nothing except for the clothes on her back.

Said clothing is a white dress.  She hates it immediately upon seeing it.  She wishes that she could tear it off of her person, but seeing as how she has no idea where she is, she doesn’t think stripping down would be a good idea.  

The robed men and women arrive soon after she wakes up.  They offer her other clothes to wear (red robes, like they’re wearing, and she doesn’t much like them, either, but they’re a sight better than her dress).  One of them - a man, dressed in armor over his robes - is kind to her, explaining that she has been imprisoned for a very long time, and is just now being released.

“Why can’t I remember anything?” she asks.

The General hesitates, his eyes pained.  “We aren’t sure,” he admits. “But we can give you somewhere to stay.  Food, if you’re hungry. We can tell you what we know about you, though admittedly that isn’t much.”

The General is true to his word.  She is given a small flat overlooking the rest of the capital, a wardrobe that consists mostly of more of the red robes, and a name: River Song.  They tell her that she is a Time Lady - one of the few who was born off-planet - who has finally made her way home. They tell her that she was a professor of archaeology, and apart from her name that’s the first thing that clicks.

She spends most of her time reading, when she can.  They give her plenty of material. She devours volumes on Gallifrey’s history, learning about how the Time Lords became what they were and how their civilization plunged into a war that threatened to destroy the universe, which was averted by a nameless man.  She learns that she herself has regenerated several times, though her ability to do so is now nullified.

“Why?” she asks, when the General comes to visit her one day.  “Why wouldn’t I have any more? You told me that this is only my third body.”

The General smiles.  “Add that to the list of things we don’t know either.”

She soon discovers that her name and archaeology aren’t the only things she has.  There is something else, deeply buried within River, whenever she sees another Time Lord.  Suddenly she is itching for a gun she doesn’t have, or a knife. She sees her bare hands wrapping around the person’s throat, squeezing the life out of them again and again until the golden glow stops.  These flashes frighten her, and she tells no one about them.

Weeks after her awakening, she is visited by an elderly man.  River’s stomach twists when she sees him, as though she  _ knows  _ that he can’t be trusted, and her hands itch to kill him.

He offers her a cordial smile.  “Good evening, Professor Song.”

River stays by the window of her flat, unmoving.  “Hello.”

“I apologize for the abrupt visit.  I presume you were about to settle in for the evening.”

“Not at all,” River forces herself to say.  “I’m not really the settling type. Or at least, that’s the little I know about myself.  You’re welcome to sit down, if you’d like. Though I must admit I have no idea who you are.”

He’s wearing one of those fancy headdresses.  “I am Rassilon,” he says.

River’s stomach sinks like a stone.  The Lord President of Gallifrey. She knows that she should be honored by his visit, but she has no desire to do anything even close to bowing.  Her muscles scream in protest against such an idea, and she has no clue as to why. 

Rassilon’s brow twitches slightly, as he realizes that she has no intention of moving.  Eventually, he does as she bids and sits at her small kitchen table, moving stiffly. They talk of surprisingly mundane things, like the weather in the capital and how she’s been settling in, how she’s coping with her memory loss.  Rassilon remains polite the entire time, but River never moves a muscle - never lets her guard down once.

When he finally leaves, she feels like she can breathe again.

Time passes, and just knowing that is a relief, for some reason.  River eventually ventures out into the city, finding the architecture beautiful but the atmosphere stifling.  The people keeps their eyes downcast, and seem terrified of making eye contact with anyone else. It feels like there’s a perpetual funeral that she wasn’t invited to.

When she isn’t awake, she dreams.  She dreams of dirt under her fingernails and her stomach swooping with excitement at every new discovery, of hearing the hum of the time vortex, of someone else’s hand in hers as she runs.  Every time she wakes up, she lets out a sigh of disappointment.

During one excursion into the city, River is accompanied by the General.  She likes the General well enough; he’s a bit uptight, but he’s been kind to River thus far.  He seems to enjoy her company as well, insofar as he can. He admits that he’s never been very good at friendships, hence his name.

“Most Time Lords choose titles,” River says, as they walk.  “Why didn’t I?”

The General shrugs.  “You were set apart,” he answers.  “You chose to remain that way.”

River hums.  She does like her name.  She can’t imagine trading it away for some impersonal title, like the Professor or the Archaeologist.  River Song is something that she can feel is right, in her very bones. It’s a part of her, as much as her unmanageable hair and her urge to kill every Time Lord she meets.

“Do you know what I was in prison for?” she asks the General.  It’s a question that’s been bouncing around in her head for some time now.

The General hesitates.  It doesn’t go unnoticed.

“What?” River asks.

“Nothing,” he answers.  “You were falsely imprisoned.  That’s why you were released.”

“But I have no memory.”

“No,” he says.  “I apologize for that.”

“It’s alright,” River says, patting him on the arm.  “I’m sure it wasn’t your fault.”

She turns away to regard the city, and in so doing misses the stricken look on the General’s face.

Almost nothing of importance happens in the months after, until the day comes that the General rushes to her flat, telling her that she has to stay there at all costs.  She doesn’t bother listening, of course, instead dressing in her heavier robes and heading down to the city proper. 

Other Gallifreyans are milling about, murmuring in confusion to each other.  No one pays her much attention, and she catches whispers of ‘Doctor’ and ‘Rassilon’ and ‘exile’.  

Her interest piqued, she eventually slides into one such conversation, discovering that an infamous Time Lord known as the Doctor has returned to Gallifrey for the first time in years, and that the High Council and the Lord President are terrified.  She stays with the crowd, and gets most of the subsequent events secondhand. She hears about Rassilon’s exile, and the High Council’s. By the time she returns to her flat, her head is spinning.

There’s a knock on her door in the middle of the night.  River answers to find an unfamiliar woman at the door, dressed in the General’s armor.

“It’s me,” she says, voice heavy.  “The General. I regenerated. May I come in?”

River stands aside.  She hasn’t been sleeping anyway, so talking to the General isn’t a bother.  She wonders if she should offer to put the kettle on, but the General collapses into one of the chairs in River’s kitchen and buries her face in her hands.

River slowly sits in the other chair, taking in her friend’s appearance. 

“For someone who’s just regenerated,” she says, “You look like hell.”

The General huffs out a laugh.  “I suppose I do,” she says, looking up.  “And I bet I’m going to look even worse after this conversation.”

Well, that sounds ominous.  River purses her lips. “Go on.”

The General sighs, straightening.  “We haven’t been honest with you, River.  We knew exactly why you were imprisoned, and we know much more about you than what we’ve told you.  I wasn’t able to be honest with you because Rassilon was breathing down my neck. Now that he’s gone, I can give you the full story.”

River freezes for a moment, staring at the General.  She feels afraid, but she doesn’t know why. She gestures for the General to keep talking.

The General smiles bitterly.  “Do you know what a confession dial is?”

* * *

 

“You are very,  _ very  _ lucky,” River says, lowly, “that I’m not the Hybrid.”

She’s in a room with Gallifrey’s remaining government.  Even with her memory broken, she is dangerous. Right now she’s shaking with her anger, her instinct to kill in overdrive, just barely holding herself back.  She wants their blood on her hands for what they put her through.

“Because if I were,” she continues, a feral smile on her lips, “I wouldn’t hesitate to burn your planet to ash.”

The General is the only person in the room who had enough courage to tell River the truth, so she’s the only one River bothers addressing.

“But,” she says, “I suppose I’ll settle for transportation off this planet - a vortex manipulator, or a TARDIS will do - and your word that you will  _ never  _ do something like this again.  To  _ anyone _ .”

The General swallows.  It’s clear she’s afraid.  She should be.

“We can give you that,” she tells River.  “We can also give you the space-time coordinates of the Doctor.  Though we can’t guarantee which version of him you’ll get. You might end up with one that doesn’t know you yet.  You’ll have to wipe his memory if that’s the case.”

River nods jerkily.  “That will do.”

“We can suggest to the next president that they sign something into law,” the General continued, “banning the use of confession dials as interrogation devices.  But I cannot guarantee it.”

River tightens her jaw until she feels like it might crack under the pressure.  “Find a way, General.”

She’s escorted from the room and told to wait, then is left alone.  She knows the only reason she isn’t being held at gunpoint is because the General respects her - and because she knows that it wouldn’t do any good.  River and the General both know, with complete and utter certainty, that not a single warrior in the capital is a match for her.

She isn’t waiting long.  The General herself appears within minutes, holding up a vortex manipulator as she enters the room.

“We used to confiscate these from Time Agents before the war,” the General says.  “This was the best one we could find. The static discharge should be minimized, and the accuracy is to the quintillisecond.”

River nods, taking the device from the General and strapping it around her wrist.  The first place she’s going is somewhere she can buy a new wardrobe. The second is somewhere she can incinerate the robes she’s currently wearing.

After that...?

“Where will you go?” the General asks.

River looks down at the device strapped to her wrist, seeing all the possibilities she had ahead of her.  There is the husband she can’t remember (the man who had torn down Gallifrey in a day). There is her job as a professor in the 51st century.  There is Earth in the 21st century, the era that her parents lived in. There is a myriad of planets and people she could visit, if she doesn’t feel the urge to pick up the pieces of her past just yet.

“I don’t know,” she answers, after a long moment.  She shoots the General a wicked grin. “But then, that’s the best part, isn’t it?”

She types in the coordinates on her vortex manipulator, and -

**Author's Note:**

> Not sure if I'll continue with this or not. I apparently have a thing for leaving things open-ended.


End file.
